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Communicating your research to teachers, schools and the public - interactively

Convener:
Chris King |
Co-Convener:
Eileen van der Flier-Keller

Sun, 08 Apr, 09:00–18:00
/ Room -2.31

If you are serious about communicating your research to teachers, schools and the public then you should know something about these audiences, be familiar with the most effective ways of engaging with each of them and be clear about what the ‘take away’ messages would be. For teachers, it is important to first identify where your research topic appears in the curriculum, for example, it is not helpful to target science teachers if the topic appears in the geography curriculum. Then you need to identify the ‘big ideas’ for the teachers, and prepare teaching strategies to present these, preferably using hands-on interactive activities. For school pupils, strategies are likely to involve some elements of ‘edutainment’. School pupils are used to being actively engaged and so your pupil-orientated strategies should focus on active engagement. Methods of engaging the public and families through open days and similar events are different again, and usually use a range of activities to engage and educate at the same time. We will discuss insights and strategies for these different audiences and ask you to have a go yourself.

We imagine we might have an audience of around 30 people for this session - so will need a flexible room that can be reconfigured in different ways to allow small groups to work together (ie not a lecture theatre). Since we are both involved in the GIFT conference on Monday-Wednesday and will leave Vienna after that, the only day that the course can run is Sunday, 8th April. Apologies for the delayed response, but I've been away.